LAW AND DEMOCRACY 

JH 

59 

./1 3 

AN ADDRESS 


DELIVERED BEFORE THE 


YALE LAW SCHOOL. 


June 29, 1886. 


BY 


WAYNE MAC VEAGH. 


PHILADELPHIA: 

COLLIKS PEIHTIKG HOUSE, 705 JAYKE STREET. 

1886 . 



































Class 

Book 


















LAW AND DEMOCRACY 


AN ADDRESS 


DELIVERED BEFORE THE 


YALE LAW SCHOOL, 


June 29, 1886. 


BY 

WAYNE MAC YEAGH. 

* 


PHILADELPHIA: 

COLLINS PRINTING HOUSE, 705 JAYNE STREET. 

1886 . 


vJK37- 



UL 

5fea,b4'3 

(V17. SCj 


LAW AND DEMOCRACY. 


Mr. Dean and Gentlemen :— 

The recurrence of the academic festival of the year brings 
with it, like so many other pleasures, a grave sense of responsi¬ 
bility as the counterpart of its joyous sense of happiness; and 
nowhere is either likely to be more fruitful than at the annual 
gathering of her children at the home of this fixmous and vene¬ 
rable Dniversity. 

The sons of Yale are indeed proverbial, throughout the land, 
for their abiding and ever-increasing affection for their Alma 
Mater; and when, in this leafy month of June, with the elms 
clad in the glory of the midsummer, they are permitted to walk 
in the old ways, to greet old friends, to summon old memories, 
to renew old associations, they recognize the high privileges 
which they enjoy, and they are sure to go away bearing in their 
hearts a sense as of an abiding benediction. 

Perhaps it is a wise, as well as a gracious, custom to withdraw 
from the pleasures of these happy days an hour in which some 
elder brother may speak to those just entering upon the labors 
and the joys of active life such words of suggestion and good 
cheer as his experiences, beyond these classic shades, have brought 
him; and an address delivered at this time, upon the invitation 
of the Yale Law School,-finds a subject, naturally, in the question 
now pressing itself upon the attention of many thoughtful lovers 
of their country: What are the relations which Law would be 
likely to sustain to Democracy, if the latter succeeded to the prac¬ 
tical control of the government ? Fortunately, it is permissible 
to consider such a subject in accordance with the demands of an 
occasion like the present in a freer spirit than before either a 
popular or a scientific audience; and in your presence it is only 



4 


necessary to say that Democracy is used in the sense of the 
masses of the people who labor with their hands, and that the 
object of this discourse is not to express opinions, hut only to 
suggest to you lines of thought which you may follow if you 
choose, not unprofitably, to their legitimate conclusions, what¬ 
ever such conclusions may be. 

You observe that, for the purposes of this discourse, it is taken 
for granted that a genuine Democracy, the actual government of 
the many, may be coming and coming to stay. Earnest and 
learned students of comparative politics continue to warn us that 
popular government is particularly unstable, and that it is, by its 
very nature, encompassed by dangers which threaten no other 
form of authority; that it has from the earliest times far more 
often failed after a short trial than succeeded after a long trial; 
and that the unrest which attends its vigor and the insecurity 
wdiich foreshadows its fall are the inevitable precursors of the ap¬ 
pearance on the scene of the military despot. They assert indeed 
that the processes of evolution in the physical world do not move 
with more sublime or relentless order than the periods which 
mark the rise, the progress, and the decay of free institutions— 
no matter upon what theatre or under wdiat circumstances the 
experiment may be tried. 

These critics of Democracy, from the standpoint of history, 
persuade themselves that real popular government is alike incom¬ 
patible with the safeguards of civil order and the bases of a high 
and stable civilization; and they especially and earnestly insist 
that a government of the many will not afford adequate protec¬ 
tion either to personal liberty or to private property, and that, 
failing in these two of the principal functions of modern states. 
Democracy itself, sooner or later, must also fail. 

If such prophecies of evil were accurate forecasts of our political 
future, which they probably are not, it might still remain the 
plain duty of all practical and sensible men to accept Democracy, 
the government of the many, without illusion and without 
reserve, if no other form of government was now possible in 
America. The actual political authority of the nation may be 
passing to the numerical majority of the people as a class, 
and they may be awakening very surely, and not very slowly, 
to the consciousness of their possession of it. Heretofore igno¬ 
rance of the possession of such power has interfered with 


5 


the practical exercise of such authority, hut iu a country 
whose boast has been these many years that it offered some 
measure of education to all its children, it ought not to be ex¬ 
pected that more than a generation would grow up in the enjoy¬ 
ment of such education, without a great change, probably, coming 
over the face of society ; nor ought it to occasion surprise if the 
masses of the people in America are becoming reasonably well- 
informed as to their political rights, and the possibilities of action 
which those rights confer. It would, therefore, serve no good 
purpose to pretend any longer that this numerical majority of our 
fellow-citizens may not soon act together, as the men who have 
the right to govern the country, and who know that they possess 
such right. Indeed, if we throw off the illusions created by old 
habits of thought, and permit ourselves to see our institutions 
as they really are, we will see that they might soon con¬ 
stitute a democratic system of government in its purest and 
simplest and amplest sense. The constitution of the United 
States, and the constitutions of different States, undoubtedly^ in¬ 
terpose obstacles to the popular will taking immediate effect; 
but those limitations are limitations of time and method only, 
and they will not, of themselves, long prevent the majority from 
exercising its sovereign will, in respect to any proposition upon 
which it is substantially united; so that Mr. Lincoln’s immortal 
phrase might become a singularly accurate statement of the charac¬ 
ter of our institutions—“government of the people, by the people, 
and for the people.” That is far from an accurate statement of their 
character to-day, but they would satisfy every requirement of the 
definition if such majority, acting as a political party, had secured 
the control of every department of the government and all of its 
officers, executive, legislative, and judicial, for such control would 
be naturally devoted to trying to secure the greatest good of the 
greatest number. 

Mr. Webster, who thought much upon the philosophy of poli¬ 
tics, predicted, more than sixty years ago, that an irrepressible 
conflict must arise between a political system based upon manhood 
suffrage and therefore aiming at equality, and an economic 
system based upon legislation in the interest of capital, and there¬ 
fore aiming at inequality. He declared that “ the freest govern¬ 
ment, if it could exist, would not be acceptable, if the tendency 
of the laws was to create a rapid accumulation of property in few 


6 


hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent 
and penniless. In such a case the popular power would be likely 
to break in upon the rights of property, or else the influence of 
property to limit and control the exercise of popular power. 
Universal suffrage, for example, could not long exist in a country 
where there was great inequality of property. The holders of 
estates would be obliged in such case, in some way, to restrain 
the right of suffrage, or else such right of suffrage would before long 
divide the property. In the nature of things those who have not 
property and see their neighbors possess much more than they 
think them to need cannot be favorable to laws made for the 
protection of property. When this class becomes numerous it 
grows clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, 
and is naturally ready at all times for violence and revolution.” 

As nobody now believes that property can succeed in America 
in restricting suffrage, we ought to find, if we may, some other 
way of securing for ourselves, if the people ever take possession 
of their own, two of the indispensable elements of a free and 
happy modern state—a profound reverence for law and a pro¬ 
found respect for the rights of the individual citizen in the 
acquisition and enjoyment of private property. 

For a long time past we have assumed that the dictates of 
self-interest were all that modern society needed for its develop¬ 
ment and permanence, to buy where we could buy cheapest 
and to sell where we could sell dearest, to interfere as little as 
possible with the desire of gain, however hateful might be some 
of its manifestations, and to teach everybody one lesson only— 
to put money in his purse. It is now becoming quite clear that 
this theory of social and political economy, upon which we have 
been living, is not of itself sufficient to insure the good order 
and happiness of a modern society essentially and vitally demo¬ 
cratic. It is, indeed, too apparent to need argument, that our 
conclusion in this respect must be revised, and if we are to live 
together in peace, if private property is to continue to be respected, 
if law is to be revered and obeyed, before we can regard these 
blessings as absolutely secure, much private property and its 
method of acquisition must be rendered moi»e Avorthy of respect, 
and the enactment, the construction, and the execution of the 
laws must be in the public interest; and even the securing of 
these blessings may not be sufficient. Perhaps, also, in some 


7 


way or other, by the quiet operation of beneficent social and 
legal reforms, or through the rougher work of civic convulsion 
and disorder, and it may be blood, some of the coarser and 
more vulgar inequalities of condition, resting mainly on the 
corrupt use of forbidden means, must be at least lessened, if not 
removed. Perhaps the State may be required, as the common 
mother of all, to find some way of placing checks upon human 
cupidity and avarice, which will be adequate to prevent unscru¬ 
pulous men from robbing the community in the pursuit of wealth, 
and from bribing legislators and judges. And the State may 
also possibly be asked to take some effectual measure, gradual, 
harmless, peaceful, it is to be hoped, but still some effectual 
measure, to reopen the ranks of the employers to the hopes and 
ambitions of the employed, and to place a limit beyond which 
capital will not be permitted to secure limited liability to 
enable it to invade pursuits which the public welfare may 
be held to require shall be left open to the competition of 
individual citizens. The public authority may resume for the 
public advantage such of its franchises as can be fairly well 
administered by public agencies, not by confiscation but by 
compensation to those now in possession; while the exercise of 
all other public franchises by private corporations may be super¬ 
vised by public authority, and in the public interest, in such spirit 
as would eftectually protect the great body of the people from 
the oppression and injustice to which in many cases they believe 
they have heretofore been subjected by those who have been per¬ 
mitted to acquire public privileges for the purpose of private 
gain. And it may be strongly insisted that the State can safely 
go one step further: that, having encouraged such aggregations 
of capital as now exist in America, and in the hands which now 
hold them, it is no longer at liberty to pretend that the law of 
supply and demand answers every exigency of the great majority 
of the people in dealing with the few persons who have secured 
for themselves the possession of such a disproportionate amount 
of the wealth and power and resources of the country; and that 
it ought to assume and exercise the function, at least of hearing 
the complaints of the majority, and expressing opinions upon 
them according to equity and justice. Such tribunals to hear 
and decide the disputes between employers and employed would, 
no doubt, in some cases, be likely to aggravate rather than alle- 


8 


viate the evil with which they are expected to deal, hut they 
may be found to be indispensable. If law is to continue to enjoy 
the respect of the majority, it is possible that the majority must 
be at liberty to invoke its sanction in the settlement of disputes 
in which they feel that the State has been so long on the side of 
their oppressors that they can expect relief in no other way. 
Tribunals of arbitration may therefore be demanded to hear and 
to pass upon the merits of any such controversy which either 
party to it desires to submit to their decision. We certainly need 
not now trouble ourselves about the obligatory character of the 
opinions of such tribunals. In the majority of instances such opin¬ 
ions would execute themselves, because they would have behind 
them a resistless force of public sentiment, and, in any event, it is 
difficult to see any serious harm they could do. It is, of course, 
very easy to ridicule this demand and many others with wliich 
laboring men are now disturbing the land. They are asked 
whether they pretend in their organized capacity to deny any 
man the right to work when he wishes, where he wishes, for 
what wages he wishes; whether they demand the right to dictate 
to employers whom they may employ, and whom they must dis¬ 
miss from their employment; and whether they demand the right 
to interfere by annoyances and violence with the prosecution by 
each person of his own lawful business, in his own lawful way. 
But the great majority of our laboring men know that many of us 
who are asking these questions have not been devoting ourselves to 
purifying the sources of the law and to improving the methods 
of our social organization, to diminishing and removing the in¬ 
equality which exists, or to securing to labor an equal ground for 
the conduct of its side of the struggle; but that we talk much 
more of the sanctity of the law than we concern ourselves about 
its purity, that we care much more for the right of free contract 
than for equality of conditions in the contracting parties, and 
that we are more zealous for the sacredness of property than for 
the duty of society to see that the results of labor are distributed 
with some semblance of justice. It is quite true that Labor is 
unable to give a scientific account of the disease which it insists 
now afflicts American society. It may be unable to name any 
remedy which cannot be discredited as soon as named, but it is 
profoundly convinced, and nothing can shake its conviction, that 
something is radically evil in a social and economic system 


9 


which, in twenty years, and in a country of unexampled material 
prosperity, possessing empires of fruitful virgin soil, causes the 
mass of its citizens to sink into the condition of laborers with 
their hands, for daily wages; while a very small minority en¬ 
trench themselves more and more securely in the enjoyment of the 
fruits of the labor of the majority, and for the purpose only, in 
many cases, of living themselves, or enabling their children to 
live, aimless and worthless lives of self-indulgence. 

And thus it happens that American labor may be slowly but 
stubbornly organizing itself, in wise ways and in unwise, for the 
struggle which it believes is immediately before it. If so, it will 
fail, of course, to make due allowances for the general immobility 
of an established social system; and it will overlook or underesti¬ 
mate the great conservative force of the general distribution of 
property among us, especially in land, and the general well-being 
of the body of the men who labor, outside of cities as well as within 
them. Yet the way of America is towards equality; “the stars in 
their courses” are fighting for it; and as surely as the order of nature 
continues our system of political equality will overcome, in many 
respects, our present economic system which advances the few to 
greater relative riches and condemns the manj^ to greater relative 
poverty. It is very natural that capital should be incapable of 
perceiving that any change is likely to occur, and especially any 
change in the political control of the country. The present sys¬ 
tem, which gives such control to capital, has existed sufiiciently 
long to make it appear to those interested in its continuance as 
a permanent system; and while they have observed some signs 
of possible future danger, they are still able to persuade them¬ 
selves that occasional disturbances of our accustomed quiet are 
due to temporary dissatisfaction, and that property, by the con¬ 
tinued division of the working classes between the existing 
political parties, is likely to continue indefinitely in the posses¬ 
sion of political power. Capitalists are also confirmed in this 
hope by the knowledge that in many ways, it is undoubtedly 
better for the physical well-being of laboring men themselves that 
such possession should continue. 

As supports for this comfortable doctrine some owners of prop¬ 
erty are looking, and looking in vain, in several directions for pro¬ 
tection against the calamity of the possession, however temporary, 
by the masses of the practical control of the government, if so 


10 


unlikely an event should happen. It is hoped that the regular 
army will in some manner he increased so that it may become an 
eftectual shield against the possible excesses of the popular spirit 
and a powerful safeguard of social order. The truth, however, is, 
that the legislation of the future, inspired by the democratic 
spirit, is far more likely to decrease than to increase our permanent 
military establishment. There is indeed no reason whatever to 
expect that laboring people will be willing to maintain in idleness 
any body of armed men larger than is barely sufficient to garrison 
the necessary fortifications on the seaboards and the frontiers, and 
to furnish the skeleton of an organization around which a volun¬ 
teer army could be rapidly gathered to repel foreign aggression, or 
to maintain, against foreign enemies, the rights and dignity of the 
nation. It is reasonably certain that labor would not consent that 
a national armed force should be provided and maintained, at its 
expense, for the preservation of the internal peace of the country. 
If any such agency is needed the citizen soldiery of the different 
States will be considered quite competent to give society all the 
protection which it deserves, and abundant care will be taken 
that no military force is provided to extend to society any pro¬ 
tection which, in the opinion of the majority, is not deserved; 
and for this reason diminutions of our present-: meagre military 
forces ought rather to be anticipated than additions to them. 

There is another hope cherished in some quarters, which appears 
to be equally without foundation, that immigration will hereafter 
certainly be discouraged and possibly prohibited; that the op¬ 
pressed, the unfortunate, the ignorant, the restless of other lands 
will cease to come hither, or, coming, will find the door of the 
new world closed in their faces. Such a change in the traditional 
policy of the country is as improbable as it is undesirable. It is 
in direct opposition to the principles and the practices of the 
majority of the great and good men who were the founders and 
the builders of America, who gave to her the glory of the heroic 
age of her colonization, and whose valor and fidelity illumined, 
as by fire, the darkest days of the Eevolution. These benefactors 
of America were accustomed to reserve their heartiest welcome 
to her shores for those who most needed her generous opportuni¬ 
ties of freedom and labor and home. They did not expect 
ignorant men to be wise. They did not expect men maddened 
by what they believed to be gross injustice to be rational. 


11 


They did not expect men of different races to possess the same 
standards of manners or of morals. They were capable of be¬ 
lieving that this vast continent was the heritage, not of them¬ 
selves alone, but of mankind, destined as well as fitted to 
receive all who came to her, and able to ameliorate their 
distresses, to diminish their differences, to cultivate their 
self-respect, and possibly to fuse them, in the processes of the 
uncounted years, into one great and free and happy people. If 
the children cannot rise to the lofty faith of the fathers, let us 
approach it as nearly as we may; and let us await, at least a 
little longer, the unfolding of the divine purpose before we forbid 
any of the unfortunate sons of men to seek a home in the same 
land where our fathers sought and found their own. Vast 
changes have, of course, taken place in our economic and political 
situation since America was founded, and it is possible that we 
could now both add to our profits and our pleasure by keeping 
this continent for ourselves and our descendants; but a vast change 
has also taken place in the thoughts of men which are now 
directed towards fraternity and away from isolation as they never 
were before. The final decision of this question, however, will 
not probably rest with us, but with the masses of the people, and 
whatever appeals may be made, with more or less of temporary 
success, to their selfishness or their ignorance, they may be im¬ 
plicitly trusted to recognize in the end the obligations imposed 
by human brotherhood, and to accept all comers as equal sharers 
in the blessings of the democratic institutions under which they 
are themselves privileged to live. Whatever else is done in the 
name of American Democracy, no fugitive from want or oppres¬ 
sion will long be denied the privilege of finding here a shelter 
and a home. 

A delusion is also somewhat widely cherished, that even if the 
door may not be closed to immigration, at least those who here¬ 
after enter will either be denied the rights of citizenship alto¬ 
gether, or may be compelled to wait a mUch longer period than 
their predecessors before such rights are conferred upon them. 
Just the contrary policy seems to be the probable as well as the 
true one. All men who seek a permanent home with us ought 
to be invested with the privilege and the responsibility of the 
suffrage, as soon as they obtain such general knowledge of our 
political system as will enable them to cast their votes with a 



12 


moderate measure of intelligence. And we ought to hasten the 
coming of that day rather than delay it, for in this country every 
class and every member of every class find at once the best pro¬ 
tection against wrong and the strongest incentive to good conduct 
in the possession of the ballot. If this was not so, it would still 
be practically impossible for American Democracy to exist except 
upon the basis of absolute equality of political rights. Prejudices 
of race, prejudices of locality, prejudices of religion may for longer 
or shorter periods suspend the operation of this natural law of the 
situation, but time and reflection may be relied upon to do their 
appointed work, and all men who make America their home will 
very soon secure an equal voice in her government. 

The American electorate, then, it may be assumed, will be free 
from even the appearance of possible control by any military 
force, and it will continue to embrace in general terms not only all 
men born here, but also all those born in foreign lands who decide 
to make this country their future home. In other words manhood, 
without more, may be accepted as the basis of our suffrage, and 
the majority of all men of full age in America will continue to 
possess the lawful right to govern the country as the}^ see fit. 

In the abstract possession of this right by the majority, of 
course, there is nothing new. The masses of the people may, 
however, soon perceive that American society, for political 
purposes, might be easilj" and naturally divided into two parties 
only—those who do not earn their livelihood by manual labor 
and those who do; or in the somewhat misleading but current 
language of the day, into the party of capital and the party of 
labor. This division has so much to recommend it to the major¬ 
ity, its simplicity is so attractive, its nomenclature so speedily 
settles the question of the proper depository of political power, 
it renders organization so easy and so efiective, it marks so indel¬ 
ibly the men who belong on the right hand and on the left, and 
its possibilities are so flattering to the hopes and ambitions of 
the majority themselves as well as to the hopes and ambitions of 
their leaders that it really seems unreasonable to expect a very 
long interval of time before such a division of parties may appear 
and sweep ‘‘into the limbo of forgotten things” many of the arti¬ 
ficial and unmeaning political divisions and contentions of to-day. 

At the same time, the influence of the spirit of party in retard¬ 
ing such a change must not be underestimated. Its capacity to 


13 


support partisan divisions upon mere names and watchwords is a 
very important consideration. Many of our fellow-citizens will 
continue while they live to wear the respective badges of the 
great parties which have divided, of late years, the suffrages of 
the country between them, and they will continue to call them¬ 
selves with pride by one party name or the other, notwithstanding 
the leaders may for years past have been laughing in each other’s 
faces at the suggestion that there was any difference of opinion 
between them, except as to the persons who should hold the 
offices. Yet party spirit is after all party spirit, and anything 
less spirited can hardly be imagined than the contemptuous indif¬ 
ference with which men of all parties have latterly come to regard 
the proceedings of their respective partisans. The only anxiety 
now felt about any legislative body, state or national, is that it 
should adjourn as speedilj^ as possible, and this anxiety is shared 
almost equally by all sensible men. It is quite within bounds to 
assert that outside of journalism, which reported it as a traditional 
duty, very few persons indeed knew or cared anything whatever 
about the earth-resounding partisan warfare which a Republican 
Senate recently waged with a Democratic President. All intelli¬ 
gent persons assumed that as the filling of the offices was the only 
question upon which the two parties differed, any controversy 
between them must necessarily refer to that subject; and such 
was the fact. Now party spirit, like all other human sentiments 
or passions, must have at least some serious pretence of sustenance; 
and in these latter days even such pretence has been wanting. 
Any cause therefore which possesses real vitality is sure to be 
eagerly welcomed, as is shown by the rapid growth of the party 
of Prohibition ; and the times would seem to be near at hand 
which will be ripe for a new departure in political organization. 
]\Ien who then come forward with problems of real and abiding 
interest however misunderstood, with issues full of the gravest 
meaning however crudely formulated, with propositions of vital 
importance to each man’s happiness and home however vaguely 
stated, would be very likely to receive a most attentive hearing and 
to secure a very large following. And if such men assumed to 
speak in behalf of fairer and juster treatment for the overwhelm¬ 
ing majority of the electorate, they would probably be heard 
with the interest and the deference which belong in a republic 
to those who represent the people. The advent of such a 


14 


party would in any event be an occasion of the greatest interest, 
and we may consider, without disadvantage, some of the func¬ 
tions which might be assigned to Law upon the accession of the » 
party of Labor to the practical control of the government. 

It is certainly very improbable that Democracy would long 
give countenance to lawlessness. In our cities, and particularly 
among the refugees from Europe, there are no doubt some dis¬ 
ciples of socialism in its advanced forms, and some believers 
even in anarchy; and it is a part of the creed of such men to 
take advantage of every opportunity to strike terror into organ¬ 
ized society even by means of arson and murder. Many of them 
believe not only in the denial of all rights of property and in 
social confusion, but in the absolute revolution and annihilation 
of all existing forms of civil authority; and they are, alas, too 
often willing to attest their devotion to these hopeless doctrines, 
born of madness or wickedness or despair, by dying for them. 
Such enthusiasts are sure to gather to their standard the bolder 
representatives of the criminal classes, and, armed with the 
agencies which modern science has placed at their disposal, they 
may, and probably will, commit crimes of terrible magnitude 
and importance to the communities in which they are committed ; 
but the authors of such calamities will be few in number, and 
the theatre of their activity will be circumscribed. They have 
no part in this discussion, and it only pauses long enough to say 
that in dealing with these enemies of society, who are them¬ 
selves without mercy, society can only safely act with the utmost 
vigor and rigor, and by prompt suppression of them by every lawful 
agency at its command. Such a course is dictated alike by wis¬ 
dom and by mercy, and by a true regard for their welfare as well 
as for that of the innocent objects of their fuiy. 

But American Democracy has very little in common with the 
theories of the advanced socialists and anarchists of the old world, 
and in no respect is the difference likely to be more marked than in 
the agencies employed by them respectively in the pursuit of their 
ends. Their ends, it must be admitted, are substantially the 
same—the abolition of privilege, and the attainment of equality ; 
for it is idle to deny that the American electorate shares this 
instinct of expansion, this passion for equality, which is one 
of the most ancient, as it is one of the most constant, forces in 
the progress of the human race, and which is the foe of privi- 


15 


lege in all its forms. It has often been checked. It has often 
been turned aside from its course. It has often been seem- 
ingly defeated and overthrown; but its resistless power has, in 
the end, made it a solvent of all opposing forces, and enabled 
it to reassert itself, and advance to new vantage ground for 
new and more extensive conquests. This desire, as possessed 
by the masses of our people, is fitly described by M. de Tocque- 
ville: ‘‘ There is such a thing as a manly and legitimate imssion 
for equality, prompting all men to wish to enjoy power and con¬ 
sideration.” The socialist agitation of the old world, however, 
is against social and economical castes and divisions based on the 
feudal system, strengthened by the habits and traditions of gene¬ 
rations, protected by vast standing armies, and sanctioned by 
immemorial law. In such a system Democracy is as a wild 
beast struggling madly, and often blindly, to free itself from the 
restraints of ages, not unnaturally confusing the blessings of 
social order with its abuses, and using any weapon within reach 
to wrest from their oppressors a larger measure of rights. 
Democracy in America, while accustomed to toil and self-denial, 
was born to the gladsome light of liberty, and to a life of prac¬ 
tical equality of political rights. Its followers have never known 
caste or a class privileged by law. Such rare and occasional 
inequalities of condition as formerly existed only served to 
emphasize the general evenness of life, and it is substantially 
only within the last thirty years that signs can be detected of 
the beginning of the great difterences, now daily growing greater, 
between the two leading divisions of the American people, the 
men who live upon the returns of capital, and the men who 
live by labor. Our “ army of the discontented” is not only com¬ 
posed of different material from that of European socialism, but 
it is animated by wholly different opinions, and confronted by a 
wholly different problem. Its members are our neighbors, whose 
lives have been passed in peaceful and not unhappy labor, whose 
equal political rights have never been even questioned, and whose 
wives and children are ample hostages for their general good 
conduct as part of a humane society, even under great provocation. 
They may be, doubtless, often discouraged at the existence of the 
gross inequalities in condition which have so rapidly grown to 
such monstrous proportions, and they may be capable of very 
soon resolving, if they hav^not already resolved, that they must 


16 


use every means at their command in order that those inequalities 
will not only cease increasing, but will begin to diminish. They 
are probably convinced that the great accumulations of wealth 
which afflict our social and political system, and which they think 
threaten its peace and happiness, have been mainly acquired 
by lawlessness, and not by law, and often in open and shameless 
disregard not only of all the restraints of law, but also of all the 
healthful and protecting traditions of the earlier history of their 
country; and they may regard themselves, in imposing reasonable 
limitations upon the modern commercial spirit, as only bringing 
the nation back to the ancient ways in which their fathers walked, 
when equality of condition was almost universal in the land. 

If they ever seriously look for an instrumentality for effecting 
such a purpose, there is no likelihood that they will overlook Law, 
since it is at once the most speedy, the most peaceful, and the 
most effectual instrumentality at their command. They may be 
trusted to make the discovery very soon that while the ballot is 
not so noisy, it is far more peremptory than the dynamite bomb. 
It does not explode, but it controls; and its control can be made 
as resistless as fate if the popular will decides to clothe itself in 
the forms of legislation. 

If we now venture to assume for the sake of the aro-ument 

O 

that the people have really determined that what they regard as 
the evil tendency of to-day—that of the rich growing relatively 
richer, and the poor growing relatively poorer—must not only 
cease, but that it must be reversed, and that they appreciate 
how easily by their majority at the ballot-box they can, by the 
use of law, apply such remedies as they think most effectual, 
a political party might soon appear, charged with the definite 
mission of trying to transform American society so that a 
new tendency will take the place of the present tendency, the 
new tendency being that the rich will grow poorer and the poor 
will grow richer; and, as a consequence, that the “ great gulf 
fixed” between these classes of men will grow narrower instead 
of wider, until, in the not distant future, they would hope to 
see it again bridged, and men passing from the one class to the 
other as frequently and as easily as in the good days of old. 

The presence of such a political party would probably put an 
end to the preaching of the worn-out maxims that each man 
ought to be contented with the sphere in which he is placed, 


17 


that capital is the best friend and protector of labor, that 
inequality is the unavoidable heritage of the race, that the 
lot of toil ought to he cheerfully accepted by those upon whom 
it has fallen, and that what is now regarded as the divinely- 
appointed law of supjDly and demand, supplemented by buying 
where you can buy cheapest, and in selling where you can sell 
dearest, will redress any wrongs which can possibly exist in any 
system of the distribution of wealth. In the presence of an or¬ 
ganized party of labor^ the truth would he at once recognized that 
these sayings are no longer useful; that the workman of to-day 
has desires almost as numerous as, and sometimes more humane 
than, those of the capitalist; that his intellectual and social horizon 
has widened “ with the process of the suns and that he will not 
longer be contented with a law which he thinks makes all of its 
demand upon him and gives all of its supply to his employer. 

^low, the laboring men of the country may be perfectly satis¬ 
fied that the present system of the distribution of wealth is 
WTong, and that the capitalists receive more than their fair share 
of the results of labor, wdiile the laborers receive less than their 
fair share, and yet they may not know exactly how this wrong 
can be remedied. They might, therefore, make experiments in 
different directions in the hope that if many of them failed one 
here and there might succeed; but such experiments, if Law was 
in the service of Democracy, would not be likely to take any 
permanent form hostile to personal liberty. 

The majority will consist of free men, to whom their birth¬ 
right has been, perhaps hitherto unconsciously, but none the 
less truly, the very breath of their lives. They have enjoyed, in 
their own degree and order, the pure delight of following their 
own pleasure in many ways, in speech, in garb, in religion, in social 
relations, each his own guide, bending the knee to no authority, 
and calling no man master. Of course there might be, at first, 
some intolerance of the growing practice of passing life in mere 
idleness and self-indulgence, some harshness of disposition to- 
w^ards those persons whom socialism calls “the drones of the 
human hive,” some disposition to subject to the not unwholesome 
discipline of compulsory labor the gilded youths, who devote 
themselves to killing time in order to unfit themselves for eter¬ 
nity ; but pity would soon usurp the place of anger towards 
these unhap23y creatures, and each member of society would 
2 


18 


probably soon be left as free as ever before, to do with himself 
as be pleased, in proper subordination to the rights of others and 
the public welfare. 

It would, also, probably be found that Law, under the govern¬ 
ment of the many, would afford every just protection to private 
property. The desire to acquire it is with men of our blood 
almost universal and quite ineradicable. It rises, indeed, among 
us to the dignity of one of the elemental passions of human 
nature; and like all such passions it sadly needs regulation and 
restraint. A very large majority of the American people will 
always consist of owners of property, who will be striving, as 
well as hoping, to increase their possessions. To some this desire 
will present itself in the form of a homestead, to others in the 
form of a competency for wife and children and their own old 
age, to others in the form of a source of social importance, to 
others in the form of means of self-indulgence, or of bequeathing 
such means to their posterity; but however widely the motives 
for acquiring property may differ. Democracy would, by the mere 
pressure of the desires of its members, be likel^^ to secure to its 
possessors the right to acquire and to possess it in peace; and 
there really seems to be no serious danger that Democracy would 
be more likely than Aristocracy, perhaps not so likely, to admit 
in society a right to despoil any man of private property he had 
honestly acquired. 

There is, indeed, one signal blessing which Law in the service 
of the majority might confer upon the country, which it does not 
seem likely to confer while in the service of the minority. In 
such service, it might greatly assist in diminishing the corrupt use 
of money in public affairs, and thereby in lessening the exhibitions 
so frequently furnished by our politics of perfidy and venality. 
The advent of Democracy to real political power would seem, 
for instance, to render the position of a legislative lobby almost 
untenable, for the mere existence of such a source of corruption 
would convict those tolerant of its presence of being enemies of 
the people, as it is an agency capable only of representing 
private interests seeking profit at the public expense. The 
character of the questions at issue would also tend to render 
more transparent the motives of action upon them. The discus¬ 
sion of the question—whether or not a proposed law was calcu¬ 
lated to advance the interests of the majority of the people, 


19 


might embrace the widest possible range of considerations, 
moral, social, and political, but it would be less easy for profes¬ 
sional corrupters of public servants to follow their calling with 
success than it is at present; and all corporations might then 
conclude, as many to their credit now do, that their rights would 
be more secure, rather than less secure, in the absence of agents 
of corruption from the halls of legislation. 

You may congratulate yourselves, gentlemen, that the profes¬ 
sion you have chosen, which we have been told is “as ancient as 
magistracy, as noble as virtue, and as necessary as justice,” has 
in a great degree escaped the evils which have too often attached 
themselves to the legislative department. The American Bench 
and the American Bar alike have remained essentially pure. The 
temptations of modern life, and the mad desire for wealth which 
so completely controls it, have doubtless caused low standards of 
professional morals to find a too ready acceptance in practice, 
and corrupt men have occasionally found their way to the judi¬ 
cial station ; but after every reasonable abatement is made, it 
remains true that if the laws had been executed with as general 
regard for the public welfare and as free from corrupting influ¬ 
ences as the}^ have been administered, some of the dangers which 
now threaten the peace and order of our society would never 
have existed. 

Law, in the government of the many, would, however, be able 
in many ways to assist the movement towards equality without 
impairing the legal sanctions either of personal liberty or of 
private property, and the first domain in which such assistance 
would be rendered would probably be the domain now occupied 
by corporations. All popular instincts are said to be entitled to 
a presumption that they rest upon some solid basis; and the 
increasing distrust of corporate organizations perhaps has its source 
not only in the fact that they have received more or less from 
the public, but also in the popular belief that it is the tendency 
of such organizations to keep the class ot the employed practi¬ 
cally distinct from the class of the employer. Even when capi¬ 
tal only obtains from the public the franchise of limited lia¬ 
bility, they believe that it takes a long stride towards the creation 
of permanent barriers between itself and labor. They are told 
that one of the chief elements in the past of the respect for labor 
and for property in this country was the ease with which persons 


20 


passed from the class of the employed to the class of the employers, 
and the frequency with which men reverted from the class of 
employers to the class of employed. Very little reflection 
is sutflcient, it is said, to satisfy any reasonable person that a 
greater and far more permanent line of demarcation between 
capital and labor is likely to be established when the former 
protects itself by forms of corporate existence; as such forms 
enable capital to be so divided that the risk of ultimate loss is 
greatly diminished, for while one investment may fail the 
liability in that direction is limited to the amount of the invest¬ 
ment itself, and other investments may succeed so as to leave the 
entire sum greater than before. Corporate management is also 
charged with diminishing the chances of individual intercourse 
between employer and employed, as in very many cases the em¬ 
ployed are said never to come into personal contact with their 
employers, but only with other subdivisions of their own class, 
who are merely the agents of capital and employed by it. 
The wage-earner of to-day is told that, no matter ho^v faithful, 
how zealous, how ambitious he may be, he has hardly any appre¬ 
ciable chance of rising from the rank in which his lot is cast 
into that of an owner of the capital in whose service he is 
employed, and that there is no limit to the desire to multiply 
the forms of corporate enterprise, or the objects to be pursued 
under its protection, until every form of human activity may 
soon be represented by corporations oflering advantages with 
which the individual cannot hope successfully to compete, and 
society may be invited to dispense with all master workmen, and 
to deal only with managers of associated capital under whom 
will be arranged in appropriate ranks men who work for wages 
only in every employment. Such organizations of capital are 
charged with theevil of dividing American citizens into two classes, 
those who labor for wages, and those who reap to themselves the 
larger part of the fruits of such labor. Many of the possessors of 
the phenomenal fortunes amassed in this country since the war 
are being constantly pointed out to discontented workingmen, 
and such capitalists are charged with having secured through 
the opportunities offered by corporate management vast quanti¬ 
ties of corporate securities which are declared to be dispro¬ 
portionate to any rightful and honest exercise of foresight and 
industry, and without pretence that such fortunes are represented 


21 


bj any equivalent services to mankind. Labor is told that such 
capitalists are not inventors, whose marvellous insight into the 
hidden relations of things has enabled them to become benefac¬ 
tors of their race ; that they are not merchants, the sails of whose 
argosies have whitened every sea, while interchanging the pro¬ 
ducts of many lands; that they are not manufacturers, whose mul¬ 
tiplied industries have given to w^orkingmen new hopes and greater 
rewards; that they are not statesmen, into whose lap a grateful 
people has poured the testimonies of its gratitude; that they are 
not soldiers, for whose defence of imperilled liberty a rejoicing 
nation has emptied herself of her wealth. They are described as 
being simply persons who have succeeded in securing untold 
wealth, sometimes by corrupt manipulation of legislators and 
judges, sometimes by shrewd manipulation of the relations of 
one corporation to another, sometimes by mere gambling upon a 
gigantic scale ; and it is asserted that in the majority of instances, 
such fortunes have been the result of the official relations of their 
owners with one or more corporate enterprises. Even the dullest 
understandine is credited with assumins; that such results could 
only have been reached by the aid of such corporate relations, and 
while protected from scrutiny and discovery by them. And it is 
again and again repeated that even a small segment of the sove¬ 
reignty of the State, the franchise of limited liability merely, has 
enabled capital almost entirely to prevent those moderate changes 
of rank and fortune which so signally distinguished the indus¬ 
trial and commercial development of the countr}^ for many years. 

Labor may then be told that what Law gave Law can take 
away, and the withdrawal of this particular form of protection to 
associated capital might possibly be one of its first uses in the 
service of its new master. In almost every State laws of this 
character could be repealed, and the franchise of limited liability 
granted under them revoked, without interference with any vested 
rights. The property of the corporation would remain just as 
before, and it would belong to the same persons and in the same 
proportions. The only change would be that the owners would 
thenceforth be not stockholders, but partners. The argument 
w^ould run that the present system is purely arbitrary and arti¬ 
ficial, and of very recent growth, that it rests solely upon grants 
by the legislative authority, and that if such grants are inconsist¬ 
ent with the public welfiire, they ought to be annulled. If the 


22 


people decided to withdraw such franchises and to return to the 
old system, they would no doubt rest their action upon the ines¬ 
timable value to society of free and frequent passages of commu¬ 
nication, and of frank and friendly personal relations between its 
two great divisions, and upon the desirability of a constant present 
consciousness on the part of the laborer that a share in the enter¬ 
prise he serves is not beyond his reach, or if beyond his reach, 
that it is not beyond the reach of the class to which he belongs. 

If it is true that the general popular distrust of corporate 
organization ought to be accepted as resting upon some general 
principle, it may be equally true that any special outburst of popu¬ 
lar hostility ought to be accepted as having for its basis what is 
believed to be some particularly irritating perversion of public 
rights to private gain. ISTow the recent labor disturbances, through 
which we have been passing, have connected themselves more fre¬ 
quently with the operations of the street railways of our cities 
than with any other department of business. And as the discon¬ 
tent of the employed seems more general in this employment than 
in any other, so the employers, in order to secure the franchises 
the}" coveted, are popularly charged with having more frequently 
resorted to the crime which strikes at the foundation of civil order, 
than seekers after any other form of corporate privileges. These 
conditions, if existing, are not j^roperly chargeable to any defect 
peculiar either to those who serve in such employment or to those 
who reap the fruits of it, but probably to the fact that those who 
grant the franchises, those who receive them, and those who serve 
under them, are all associated with a transaction which it may be 
argued is without reasonable justification at the present time. The 
laboring man may be told that the highways of a city belong to 
the people; and therefore, when a grant is made to a few private 
persons of the right to exact from every traveller upon them a 
measure of tribute sufficient to make the receivers rich ‘‘ bejmnd 
the dreams of avarice,’’ the evil passions of human nature are likely 
to attend upon such a transaction. It will be charged, truly or 
untruly, that the givers must be bribed to give what they know 
belongs to the people; and that the receivers, paying for their gift 
in crime as well as in money, naturally oppress the labor in their 
employ, so that before the recent revolts sixteen hours a day was 
declared to be, in some cases, not an unusual exaction. Labor, 
however, even if it is properly treated, is likely to be unreasonable, 


23 


for it believes that its employers are reaping great gains which 
do not belong to them, x^ow, Law and Democracy, in conjunc¬ 
tion, might possibly settle this source of trouble very speedily, 
and probably in a liberal spirit. Except upon full and open 
trial and proof of such offences as forfeit all claim to forbear¬ 
ance, they would be likely to confiscate nothing. They would 
redeem for the people franchises which the servants of the 
people never should have given away; and they would do even 
this only upon compensation. It might be argued that the re¬ 
sumption of such franchises, in such a spirit, would not open the 
door to unjust interference with other forms of private property, 
but that, on the contrary, it might give sanction and protection to 
such property. It would be insisted that it may not be safe to 
accustom plain people too long to the perversion of the proper 
meaning of the word property, so as to make it include everything, 
however wrongly obtained, as if such possession shared the sacred 
character of that property which is alone worthy of the name— 
property honestly acquired; and it would be urged that the spec¬ 
tacle of capitalists bribing public servants to betray to them 
their public trusts, and then standing as highwaymen upon the 
highways of a city, and levying upon every workingman, each 
morning and evening of the year, such tolls as will give great 
profits, not only with the acquiescence, but with the commenda¬ 
tion of their fellow capitalists, is not calculated to inspire De¬ 
mocracy with profound respect for the rights of property in any 
form ; but that the use of the public highways in the public 
interest only would be a far more elevating sight, and one much 
better calculated to create a proper reverence for other existing 
rights. As with the highways, so it may be urged in respect to 
the other necessities of civilization the supply of which naturally 
becomes a monopoly in a municipality—water, light, heat—that 
the furnishing of these ought also to be in the public interest 
only, and not in that of private corporate capital. Law and 
Democracy, if acting together, might probably soon address 
themselves to the resumption by the public of all such privileges, 
if such franchises are easily within the ordinary scope of muni¬ 
cipal management, and some of them are now in the actual control 
of well-governed cities. And whenever franchises existed, essen¬ 
tially public in their natureand tending tocreatea monopoly, which 
were within the reasonable scope of management by the public and 


24 


in its interest, Democracy would be very likely, with the help 
of Law, to enable the public to undertake the administration of 
them, for the people would be easily persuaded that their control 
was not likely to be more fruitful of corruption and crime than 
the possession of such franchises by private persons, while some 
portion of the gains capital had thus drawn from the laboring 
classes might be secured for the public treasury, and be devoted 
to public uses. 

In our system for the division of legislative authority, almost 
all corporate enterprises now in private ownership, if resumed by 
the people at all, would be subject either to municipal or national 
control. Very little scope, if an}^, would be left to the State, and 
the functions of the Nation would probably be limited, even in 
the wishes of many socialists, to the furnishing of the currency, 
the transportation of persons and property, and the transmission 
of intelligence. The latter function the nation now discharges in 
great part, and, perhaps, considering its entire history, the record 
of no great administrative service is more creditable than that of 
the postal service of the United States. It has also gradually ac¬ 
quired the right to transmit goods in small quantities, and this 
function it discharges as admirably and as greatly to the public 
advantage as the older one. The addition of the telegraph to 
the post-office is still resisted, but it is claimed it will not be long 
delayed, and that department might then present the most exten¬ 
sive, the most beneticent, and the most economical service ever 
conferred upon mankind under a single organization. With this 
example before it. Democracy might some day seriously consider 
the feasibility of assuming control of the entire transportation 
system of the country ; but it would consider long before taking 
this step, for it would know that the experience of the nations 
of Europe, in making this experiment, would not be likely to 
aid us to any great extent, in view of the vast differences of 
the conditions of the problem. It would probably never assume 
any such burden, but the subject would be present to the minds 
of men, with the knowledge not only that there are far-reaching 
considerations on both sides of the question, but that transporta¬ 
tion may become so concentrated and so absolute in its control of 
the general business of the country that it would be necessary to 
transfer its administration from private hands for private inte¬ 
rests to the public authority in the public interest; and if the 


25 


balance of the public welfare was ever clearly in favor of the 
step, the majority might take it; but they would take it only 
in the name and under the forms of law, upon reasonable com¬ 
pensation to its owners, and upon the decisions of the appointed 
courts of justice that the taking was wdthin the lawful scope of 
the public authority. The only serious obstacle to this conserva¬ 
tive course—and that obstacle will eventually be overcome— 
would be found in the popular belief, unhappily only too general, 
that capital has in many instances secured its property as well 
as its franchises by the corruption of the servants of the people— 
a crime which Democracy is likely always to regard as a crime 
against civilization itself, a poisoning of the wells of the people, 
whence they draw their life. It is this belief which imparts to the 
unrest of labor much of the bitterness which attaches to it, and 
which gives, almost alone, serious importance to the bitter denun¬ 
ciations, spoken and written, of all capitalists and of all corpora¬ 
tions to which labor is now being too much accustomed. If hon¬ 
estly-acquired property is ever in real danger, it may be chiefly 
due to the conduct of men who were willing to secure legislative 
or judicial favor by purchase, to gather wealth through infamy 
and wrong, and yet who, in times of trouble, w^ould expect the 
protection of the law which they had helped to degrade and the 
aid of the justice which they had helped to betray. Indeed, it 
sometimes appears as if some capitalists were determined to 
leave no ground of respect among the masses of the people for 
capital, nor any basis, in the democratic ages, for the sanctity 
which ought to attach to private property. 

The first functions allotted to Law, under the new order of the 
government of the many, would naturally be in the directions 
mentioned, but its functions might not end there. Legislation 
would, no doubt, quickly follow in many directions, especially 
in attempts to limit the acquisition of vrealth, both directly 
by the fixing of limits and indirectly by taxes, both in life and 
at death calculated to turn any excess into the public coffers. 
Law might also be invoked to attempt to fix the hours of labor 
and the scale of compensation; and in its earliest days of victory 
Democracy would, doubtless, be in great danger not only of eco¬ 
nomic follies, and of attempting matters beyond its control, but 
of passing under the domination of its worst enemies, the advo¬ 
cates of violence and the believers in anarchy. 

If such men acquired even a temporary leadership of the new 


26 


movement, it is possible, of course, that they might mislead, and by 
misleading, greatly inflame the minds of many dwellers in cities 
by representing capital as the oppressor of the poor in the same 
spirit in which the nobility of France was represented as their op¬ 
pressors a hundred years ago, and some repetition might then 
be attempted of those crimes at which humanity still shudders; 
for while the conditions of the two cases differ as light differs 
from darkness, yet mobs are always capable of becoming as wild 
beasts, and to-day’s dislike of inequality sometimes looks as if it 
might temporarily pass into some semblance to the mad, blind 
hatred and rage which then suddenly flamed out of the depths of 
hell, after centuries of endurance of all contumely and bitterest 
wrongs. Every lover of order and of peace ought therefore to help 
to remove all just grounds of complaint, instead of seeking to live 
in a fool’s paradise, where all things unpleasant are ignored or 
denied, and only smooth prophesyings of placid ease and luxury 
are welcomed. 

If, however, such trials ever come to us, the forces which 
American civilization holds in reserve will be entirely adequate 
to deal with them. It is only in times of supreme peril that 
such forces assert their presence, and it is only a healthy and 
vigorous organism which develops and preserves them. Free 
government in America with all its faults is such an organism, 
and it can confidently rely upon their saving power against the 
day of evil fortune. All the noblest impulses of a common 
nature will then again mould us into one patriotic people before 
whose consuming wrath will perish all who strike at liberty 
through law. 

But let us rather listen to reason, speaking the language of hope. 
The common people are “ rich in common sense,” and they could 
not if they would yield long to political frenzy and the crimes 
which follow it. On the contrary, their inborn respect for law and 
public order and the rights of their fellow-men would constrain 
them to follow in the old and well-worn paths in which their 
fathers trod. Walking in those paths, we may also hope that 
such guidance would attend them as would lead them 

“ On with toil of knees and heart and hands— 
****** 

* * close upon the shining table lands. 

To which our God himself is moon and sun.” 


27 


Under such guidance government of the many might confer 
inestimable blessings upon society, and it is far more agreeable, and 
perhaps as profitable, to indulge in such conjectures than in those of 
an evil tendency. And who will venture to place limits to the 
possible advance in good directions of the democratic spirit, if only 
we, the minority, all strive to do our duty to enlighten, to chasten, 
to purify, to ennoble the lives of those who may one day hold in 
the hollow of their hands the existence of our beloved country? 
Strengthened with our strength, illumined by our wisdom, and 
aided by our sympathy, there are many good directions in which 
Law as a handmaid of Democracy might take long strides forward. 

For our pleasure only, and only for to-day, and as part only of 
an academic exercise, we may allow our imagination to present to 
us some such possibilities of the future. Law in the service of 
Democracy might begin its activity by making public education a 
matter of far wider importance than under the government of a 
minority, who feel themselves able to give to their children in 
private schools and universities the advantages of a higher and 
broader culture than is provided for the children of the poor; 
while the poor may naturally desire that the inequality they have 
suffered shall not extend to their children. There might thus be 
secured one harmonious and connected system, under the patron¬ 
age and control of the State, of all the various stages of intellec¬ 
tual training, from adequate primary schools to noble and well- 
equipped universities. 

Possibly art and letters for the same general reasons might be 
placed under the fostering care of Law and receive governmental 
appreciation and support under the rule of the majority. The 
possessors of private libraries and private galleries, as well as 
those persons who feel that such collections are possible to them, 
often naturally fail to appreciate why the State, in its organ¬ 
ized capacity, should give countenance and aid either to litera¬ 
ture or to art. Democracy, on the other hand, might perceive 
that many of the majority would have opened before them a new 
heaven and a new earth, if the pathways of art and letters, which 
lead to the summits of the olive mountains, were familiar to their 
feet. The humane and civilizing influences of such familiarity 
can hardly be overestimated. It is indeed impossible to know how 
great is the tendency of good books, of noble pictures, of marbles 
which are of themselves an education in grace and beauty, to 


28 


diminisli the passions which more than any other threaten the 
repose of modern society, the passions “ of envy and hatred, and 
malice and all uncharitableness,” to gently lead men towards the 
peace which is horn of contentment and joy, and to lift their 
habitual thoughts into a purer and serener air. And perhaps few 
masses of people were ever more susceptible to such influences than 
are our fellow-countrymen. For the lifetime of an entire genera¬ 
tion the great majority of American children have received more 
or less education, and have enjoyed some familiarity with books, 
with pictures, with travel, with the rapidly shifting and instruc¬ 
tive scenes and experiences of American life. Such a population 
is peculiarly fitted to find satisfaction for its desire for a loftier 
ideal of life, in the revelations of truth and beauty, of which lite¬ 
rature and art, under the inspiring patronage of an elevated 
public spirit, are the divinely-appointed ministers. FTeither of 
these great agencies for the humanization of man in society is at 
its best at the call of private patrons. Indeed, literature long 
ago found its very life was incompatible with such bondage of 
the spirit, and thenceforth spoke only to the public; and even it 
might be greatly benefited by the sense of responsibility which 
attaches in all noble spirits to a public service,and b}^ the elevating 
and inspiring enthusiasm of teachers of the people, dedicated 
to the elevation of the standards of human life. Art, in like 
manner, suflers when it abandons its public function of realizing 
in visible shape its dreams of immortal beauty for the instruc¬ 
tion of humanity, to serve the bidding of private persons. It 
is not while engaged in such tasks for such taskmasters that the 
flowering times of the human spirit ought to be expected to 
recur to confer their blessings upon mankind. It is probably 
only in the public service, in the service of the race of which they 
are a part, and under the inspiration of an all-embracing human 
sympathy that great writers as well as great artists are ever likely 
again to bless mankind with the choicest fruits of their labors; 
and the people might be persuaded to rise to the noble height of 
calling to their service influences so admirably designed to give 
light and warmth and truth and glorious color to the common 
life of men. 

It sounds, of course, at present like a wild suggestion, but, 
after all, why may we not hope that Democracy, if it started 
upon such a course, and was properly encouraged, would complete 


29 


the circle of its beneficent influences upon society by adding the 
last and greatest of blessings—by taking religion also under the 
protecting care of the State? It is indeed ‘'a far cry” to the time 
when dogmatic theology will not only be regarded as unnecessary 
to the teaching of religion hut as incompatible with it; and yet 
the future, which has in store so many surprises, may be reserving 
this-also—religious instruction in America as a part of all public 
education. 

The masses of the people might conclude that the making of 
character was a more important part of education than the giving 
of information, if they learned that education divorced from 
religion may be a danger rather than a safety to the State, and 
may really increase crime rather than diminish it. Instruction 
in the laws of right conduct and the helping to make truthful and 
honest children might then seem more desirable than mere addi¬ 
tions to their knowledge; and while moral instruction would not 
necessarily include the doctrines of religion, the drawing of 
Democracy to Christianity can only be a question of time. Tiie 
pronounced hostility of Socialism even is directed only against 
the dogmas of theology and the practices of professing Christians, 
and not against Christ’s own precepts or practice, while the life 
of the Master and the lives of his apostles and martyrs are power¬ 
fully and constantly appealing to the loftiest aspiration of the 
democratic spirit to accept His guidance and leadership in the 
long wandering which awaits it, through the desert, to the pro¬ 
mised land. 

However impracticable the suggestion may appear to he, it can 
do no harm to reflect upon the probable consequences of making 
the cardinal doctrines of religion a part of the daily instruction 
of American youth—self-sacrifice rather than self-indulgence, 
humility rather than vanity, equality rather than privilege, the 
“ doing unto others as you would they should do unto you,” 
rather than the rule of “ each man for himself,” the old idea of 
the vanity of riches rather than the new idea that they alone 
have any real value, the worthlessness of ill-gotten gain, rather 
than its worth as a passport to rank and respect, the priceless 
value of veracity, the worth of honesty. The constant and 
repeated contrast of such ideals of human life would help, not 
harm, both the children and the society of the future, which is 
to receive its form and pressure at their hands. 


30 


AYhile the difficulties would be very great in bringing religion 
in America within the domain of the government, Law and 
Democracy might not find them insurmountable, if they ever set 
themselves seriously to the task of overcoming them. Indeed, if 
even the essential doctrines of morality were made for the chil¬ 
dren of the public schools “familiar in their mouths as household 
words,” they would be likely to discover, when they came to 
man’s estate, some practical method of securing for religion also 
a place among the recognized functions of the State; and it is 
incalculable how much such a recognition would add to the 
dignity, the stability, the authority, and the refining and civil¬ 
izing influences of popular government. 

If, therefore, government by the minority, seeking the greatest 
good of the smaller number, is ever to give way to government 
by the majority, seeking the greatest good of the larger number, 
let us endeavor at least to hope if we may not believe that 
among the functions it will assign to Law may be the lofty tasks 
of securing adequate public recognition and support of education 
in all its stages, and a like recognition of literature, of art, and, if 
possible, of religion, so as to withdraw, to some extent, from the 
hard lot of labor its ignorance, its hideousness, its bitterness, its 
hopelessness, and to supply their places with a growing sense of 
knowledge, of beauty, of charity, of hope, until those to whom it 
has been allotted to “ labor and to wait” will find their patient 
toil illumined by— 

“ Such light as never was on sea or land,” 

and themselves transformed by the daily companionship of the 
virtues and graces and promises of life into fit partakers of the 
brotherhood of men, in the fatherhood of God. 

If we were cheered by such anticipations, and fortified by such 
hopes, of the future of American Democracy, we could repeat with 
full hearts those well-known words of welcome, spoken on Ply¬ 
mouth Pock:— 

“Advance, then, ye future generations. * * * We bid you 
welcome to the pleasant land of the father^., * * * We greet 
your accession to the great inheritance which we have enjoyed. 
* * * yVe welcome you to the inestimable blessings of rational 
existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of 
everlasting truth.” 


31 


What, then, gentlemen, is the conclusion of the whole matter? 
Only the homely and old-fashioned conclusion that the peace, the 
prosperity, and the happiness of our beloved country rest, and 
can only rest, upon the virtues of her people, upon the cultivation 
among all classes of a spirit of liberty, of equality, of fraternity. 
And it will always be true, under any political system possible 
for us, that the best way of creating a proper reverence for Law 
is by taking care that Law is worthy of reverence by its single¬ 
ness of devotion to the general welfare; that the best security 
for private property is in taking care that it is only honestly 
acquired; and that the best way of developing a patriotic spirit 
is by helping to make and keep all the ministries of the State pure 
and beneficent. ]^o class of her citizens can do more to enable 
her to realize this high ideal of good government than the law¬ 
yers of the country. They are sworn ofiicers of justice, dedicated 
to service in her temple, and, therefore, to you, in an especial 
manner, appeals the urgent obligation of educated citizenship in 
America to-day:—to determine that so far as is in your power the 
laws of your country shall he purely made, purely administered, 
and purely executed; that public franchises shall be redeemed 
when improperly diverted, and when not redeemed shall be 
supervised in the public interest and for the public welfare; that 
mere aggregations of capital under corporate protection shall he 
discouraged rather than encouraged; and that every man who 
earns his daily bread by labor may he assured that the law will 
provide an impartial tribunal where his complaints will be 
patiently heard and fairly decided, while all the elevating and 
refining influences which attend upon civilization shall be far 
more generally and widely diffused than ever before. 

In these ways and in others we know not of, our social and 
political system of life in America might, by the blessing of 
God, be placed upon the broader, the more humane, and the 
more enduring basis of purer law, of wider liberty, of greater 
equality; and then, at last, the Elation, long foretold, might appear 
whose foundations were laid in fair colors, and whose borders 
were of pleasant stones; and to it the promise of the prophet 
might be redeemed: ‘‘ All thy children shall be taught of the 
Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.” 


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